Posted on 10/08/2006 11:49:45 AM PDT by Bokababe
Martti Ahtisaari and Finland’s Nazi Past
At the time of the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 when Martti Ahtisaari was the President of Finland, his government sought to commemorate and to honor Finland’s Nazi SS volunteers from the Holocaust. This offers irrefutable evidence of Ahtisaari’s direct links for support of Nazism and Nazi revisionism. If Ahtisaari had bothered to check the decisions of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals, he would have found that that court held that all Waffen SS troops were war criminals guilty of war crimes and guilty of committing crimes against humanity, namely the mass murder of Jews. Ahtisaari lacks even an elementary understanding of the Holocaust and the role of the SS in the Final Solution.
In 1999, Martti Ahtisaari’s Finnish government supported official government plans to honor and to commemorate Finland’s Nazi Waffen SS violunteers during World War II. The Finnish government plan was to mark the graves of Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers who had been killed in the Soviet Union. Finland had over, 1,400 Finnish volunteers in the Nazi Waffen SS, 300 of whom were killed in the Ukraine and in the Caucasus. Finland concluded a secret agreement with Nazi Germany before the invasion of the USSR that would allow Finland to secretly send Finnish volunteers to Heinrich Himmler’s Waffen SS forces. Himmler formed a Finnish Waffen SS Volunteer Battalion from these Finnish troops called “Nordost”. This Finnish Battalion was attached to the “Nordland” Waffen SS Regiment of the 5th SS Division “Wiking”, one of the most brutal and fanatical Nazi SS Divisions of World War II, commanded by Felix Steiner.
Finnish Nazi SS troops formed the vanguard and spearheaded the German Wehrmacht assault against the Stalingrad and Caucasus regions in 1942 and advanced to the Grozny oil fields in Chechnya. This was the farthest Nazi advance into the Soviet Union by the Axis, spearheaded by Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers. It is important to remember that the Finnish government of Risto Ryti sent the Finnish Nazi SS volunteers. There was government action on the part of Finland. Ryti should have been prosecuted for war crimes and for genocide. But he never was. Finland’s Nazi past and role in the Holocaust was blurred and obscured by Finnish propaganda.
The memorial would consist of a small monument or plaque erected by Ahtisaari’s Finnish government at a burial site in southern Ukraine where the remains of 150 Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers are buried. Finns were initially considered non-Aryans because they belonged to the Finno-Ugric language group, not regarded as Indo-European under Nazi racist policy. Nevertheless, Himmler accepted Finns into the elite, racially pure, Waffen SS, as belonging to the Nordic racial stock and regarded Finns as among his best SS troops.
Finland’s Jewish groups protested to President Martti Ahtisaari because his government was subsidizing or financing the project. Gideon Bolotowsky, a Finnish Jewish leader, accused Ahtisaari of financing Nazism. Bolotowsky told Reuters: “They (the government) are giving money to a Nazi cause. They did not fight for Finland. …It is a mistake of the government.”
What is remarkable is that Ahtisaari’s government defended this honoring of Finnish Nazi SS war criminals. In a May 10, 1999 Reuters news story, it was reported:
“Officials defended the plan to commemorate the SS men, saying it would be a gesture of remembrance rather than approval.
‘All governments erect monuments or plaques to their war dead,’ said Heikki Hakala, executive director of the Society for Remembrance of the War Dead. ‘This (momument) would be to honour the fallen soldiers, not for any particular deed…’
An official at the ministry of education, which donated 500,000 markka ($91,000) to the society, said the government saw nothing wrong with the plan as there was no evidence the Finnish SS battalion was involved in any Nazi attrocities.”
In 1958, the Finnish government completely exonerated the Nazi SS volunteers and gave them full “combatant rights”.
Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement: “Just when the German government is applying legislation to strip such volunteers of their war pensions, Finland is acting to effectively vindicate Nazi units associated with war crimes and thus to balances the Holocaust by equaling perpetrators and victims.'’
Samuels asked Martti Ahtisaari to use his influence with the government to “desist from this act of historical revisionism.'’
Martti Ahtisaari and his governemtn defended the plan: “Officials defend the plan to commemorate the SS men, saying it would be a gesture of remembrance rather than approval.”
Samuels told Reuters that he had written to President Martti Ahtisaari that honoring Finnish Nazi SS volunteers would “betray the image of Finnish neutrality as much as it (would) offend the honor of the victims of Hitlerism.'’
The Paris-based European Jewish Congress said in a statement that Ahtisaari’s commemoration of the Finnish Nazi SS war criminals “is an offence to all victims of the Nazis and jeopardizes the educational objectives of the European Union member countries to combat racism and anti-Semitism.”
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal held all Waffen SS members to be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Why doesn’t Ahtisaari know this? Is he that ignorant? The Finnish Nazi SS volunteers enabled Hitler to murder Jews, Russians, Roma, and Sinti. Didn’t the Finnish leaders know about the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler? Didn’t they know about Kristallnacht in 1938 or the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935? Didn’t they know what Hitler intended to do with the Jews in the Soviet Union? Didn’t the Finnish government know about Hitler’s concept of lebensraum, under which he planned to exterminate the Russian population and settle Russia with ethnic Germans? Of course, Martti Ahtisaari doesn’t know about any of this?
If this doesn’t finally discredit the ICG and put the last nail in its coffin, nothing will. Fact is stranger than fiction. You could never make this up.
Martti Ahtisaari, as President of Finland, sought to honor and commemorate Finnish Nazi SS war criminals, war criminals held guilty by the Nuremberg Tribunal of committing crimes against humanity and of participation in the Final Solution, the genocide of European Jews. This supporter and financier of Nazi war criminals and of genocide is deciding the future status of Kosovo? The irony is unbelievable.
Jewish News Weekley>
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/20969/edition_id/431/format/html/displaystory.html
Friday June 9, 1995
Finland: Where Jews fought on the side of the Nazis
SHERWOOD L. WEINGARTEN
Bulletin Staff
Himmler asked about Finland's Jews during a visit in 1942, and Finland's Prime Minister Rangell replied: "Finland has a couple of thousand Jews - decent families and individuals, whose sons fight in our army just like other Finns, and who are as respected as citizens as all others. We have no Jewish question."
And that was that.
The issue was discussed during the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets. See Chapter 3, Delegation Statements, Finland.
(Celtjew Libertarian, FYI only)
Do they (or you) think this is likely to make the world love the Serbs more? It's likely to have the opposite effect. I was watching television today and wondering why Serbs are so often the villains on TV dramas. Right now, I'm not wondering. That's an emotional reaction and most likely it will pass, but I don't think this sort of thing is good public relations for them.
Finland's relationship was not really an alliance w/ Germany. Since Great britain and Sweden did nto come to the aid fo Finland in 1939 or 1944, Finland turned to germany out of necessity, and only because Germany was an obvious enemy of the Soviet Union.
My grandfather blew up 5 Russian tanks with molotov cocktails in the Winter War and my grandmother was a nurse in a Finnish field hospital. They had to move their MASH outposts repeatedly as the Russians would shell their tents.
Look there were many reasons (not all bad ones) why countries misght have been motivated to join Germany during WWII in fighting their enemies. That the Soviet Union attacked and this was a way to get back them is certainly one that is worthy of consideration.
But the point was that Ahtesaari was the first president to try and honor those Finns of the Nazi Waffen SS -- and then he is made a negotiator for the Balkans? And then he makes a remark about "collective guilt" that is worthy of a Nazi? All Finns were probably not Nazis, but it seems to me that Ahtesaari liked the Nazi portion of Finland's history just a little too much -- and that is why I posted the article.
I will anwser this one. How does Serbs have right to accuse all others that have sided with nayis?
Serbs were only nation in the Europe that hade no nayis, or SS units....
You wrote:
"Man... nazi is just that...nazi, no exusess..."
I didn't make any excuses. Communist is just communist and yet we sided with those mass murderers in WWII because we believed we needed to. We also took in plenty of Nazi scientists after WWII to make sure we would beat the USSR in the space race.
Well Ahtesaari is honoring Nazis and Islamists... same thing.
Just fascist or islamofascist...
Just like in The Cuckoo?
Great movie.
Though I question the real-life efficacy of blowing into a patient's ear while howling like a wolf.
I haven't seen any evidence Finnish SS members were involved in wartime atrocities and they certainly played their part in retaining Finland's independence. As such, they do not deserve to be forgotten.
People hate us so let's attack someone else: really this sort of thing doesn't make the Serbs look good.
Just took a little research online. The Serbian Volunteer Corp served with the Nazis. Milan Nedic was a Serbian who had been Minister of Army and Navy for Yugoslavia in 1939 and 1940. He had openly been friendly towards Hitler, for which he was dismissed from the position. But when the Nazis took over, he was more than ready to be head of the Serbian puppet government.
Serbians had a good record, but their had Nazis... So did the U.K. for that matter.
Truth is I hadn't the vaguest idea of Finland's WWII history before I read this article. The point was Ahtesaari, not Finland as a whole. If Savich's point was incorrect then that's what the forum is for, to debate this stuff and get the truth out there.
Finland may be the most wonderful country in the world and had every reason to do what it did during WWII, I haven't a clue. But Martti Ahtesaari is a racist, goose-stepper and even one of the Swiss diplomats said that Ahtesaahri's remark would have been against the Swiss anti-racist laws, but no one in the UN seemed to even flinch at it. Couple that with Ahtesaari honoring a Waffen SS unit and what would you think? Please tell me?
You wrote:
"Serbs were only nation in the Europe that hade no nayis, or SS units...."
Really? What do you call "The Volunteers" of the ZBOR? You know, the "Serbian Volunteer Corps" commanded by
General Kosta Musicki, that hunted down communist partisans in the war. In November 1944, part of the Serbian Volunteer Corps was transferred to the Waffen-SS, renamed as the "Serbisches Freiwilligen Korps der SS" and fought as a Waffen-SS unit on the Eastern front until the end of the war....unless I am mistaken.
You are wrong on that one, Kronos. There were a small group called the Ljoticevi who were never large enough to get elected to any office before the war, but who came to power when the Germans occupied Yugoslavia. Ljoticevi were few in number but they were fascists.
And then there was Nedic. Nedic, like many others, saw barges floating down the Danube from Ustashi Croatia piled high with Serbian bodies, labeled "Serbian Meat for Market" and realized that if Serbs didn't cooperate to some extent, there would be no Serbs left for it to matter what side they were on. Nedic was a collaborator out of survival, not ideology. He had no history, that I know of, of having been an ideological Nazi.
Have you ever heard of the Russo-Finnish war of 39/40? If yes, then Finnish volunteers are no wonder, as well as the Balts after 1940 sovietization.
Did you know that Ahtisaari was first brought into the United Nations Organization by Kurt Waldheim, who fought for the Nazis in Yugoslavia?
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